


these stars will guide us

by plinys



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-14 23:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4583532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She can still find the brightest star in the night sky, and for a second she contemplates climbing up onto the roof to get a better view,  following that star until it takes her home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these stars will guide us

1

When she was young she used to believe in stars

The great wagon in the sky that her mother carefully pointed out to her, and the bright light that will always serve to guide her home. Wanda traces the pinpoints of light in the fog on her window whispering their names under her breath, long after her brother has gone off to sleep. 

On those nights when she cannot sleep the stars become her companions.

Sometimes, when Wanda’s feeling particularly adventurous, she will steal away onto the roof of their apartment building, minding one men who come up to smoke, she’ll sit on the edge of her little world, legs swinging down beneath her, and watch the stars overhead.

“You could make a wish,” her mother tells her, the first time Wanda sees one fall.

And she does, reaching out her fingers towards the distance, she makes a silly wish – and finds it true the next morning when there are cookies on the table for breakfast.

So for a little while, at least, Wanda believes on the wishing stars, she believes that the world could be hers, and the star would give it to her.

But then the stars get closer. Those that used to fall far away, are closed now, booming loudly so that she can hardly sleep. She stands in a street, wrecked and ruined, a little girl in a red dress – “It’s just a shooting star, they don’t come close usually,” she tells the other children who stare into the hole in the ground with a sense of wonder and apprehension.

It’s almost easy to ignore the way Pietro stands off to the side, a genius at barely eight, who insists he knows everything simply because he’s twelve minutes older than her.

“Their bombs,” he tells her later when they’re heading home, “From the war, come to wipe us all out.”

But she ignores him, until she no longer can believe.

 

2

“Meteor shower.”

 It is those two words, simple, and that manage to pull her out of her funk.

When she looks up from the puzzle that she’d never planned on finishing, Pietro is standing in front of her, a worn red blanket in his arms and a bottle of something she was going to bet that he had nicked from the liquor store down the road. She ought to disapprove of that, frown a little, and insist that she had to be the one responsible for the two of them.

“We shouldn’t,” she replies, but it’s a weak objection. Her brother barely pretends to have even heard her. Gathering up the rest of the supplies for an evening on the roof top, carefully locking the windows, her objections falling upon unhearing ears.

“Wanda,” he says, face scrunched up in a serious look that seems completely out of place for her brother, “This might be our last one.”

And that’s all it takes. She’s up out of her seat then, pulling him closer to her, a brief hug to remind each other that their still alive, and tomorrow won’t change that.

Though she still wishes on one last star, that they’ll make it through this, her eyes squeezes shut as she begs for her life to the heavens that have only ever let her down.

 

3

The stars look nearly the same in America as they did in Sokovia. There are less here, the pollution of the cities lights making it harder to for the lighter of the stars to shine, but she can see the familiar ones.

She can still find the brightest star in the night sky, and for a second she contemplates climbing up onto the roof to get a better view, following that star until it takes her home again.

But her home is gone – it’s been gone since she was a girl, though she had never been willing to admit the loss. Now though as she looked up at a sky that was nearly familiar to her, she knew it in her heart.

“Wanda?”

The almost voice startles her out of her thoughts, and quickly she turns away from the kitchen window, towards the person who has disturbed her. Vision seems to almost glow in the evening light, the metallic shimmer of his fabricated flesh, reflects the pinpoints of light that carry in through the open window.

“I didn’t wake you did I,” she says slowly. She had meant to be quiet when she’d slipped away to the kitchen of the Avengers Mansion, carefully she had moved light on her feet as she had often done as a child, but it seems she was less quiet than she had thought.

“I was already up, when I heard you.”

“Still, I am sorry,” Wanda replies.

She’s not sure what else to say, her words struggle to come (another common ailment of being long from her home), and when Vision seems to say nothing else in return, she simply nods her head once and grabs the bottle of water that she had originally came into the kitchens for.

“Good night, Vision.”

She’s nearly out of the room, before she hears the reply of, “Good night, Miss Maximoff.”

 

 

4

“I knew I would find you out here.”

The voice is no surprise to her, she had sensed him almost as soon as he had left the Avengers Mansion, and expected that somebody would come find her one of these nights.

Though that _he_ was the one to look for her may be slightly surprising.  

It was not that the Vision was unkind to her. He had been nice to her many times before, and she would be lying if she were to say that she had not seen the way he had looked at her from time to time. The synthozoid’s emotions were never quite clear enough for Wanda to discern without using her powers, but she could make assumptions easily enough.

Concern was a common emotion among their group.

“I like the stars, and here it is peaceful,” she replies, her legs swinging over the edge of the roof top. She’s forgone her usual dresses for a pair of pajama bottoms (a sign that she ought to have been asleep), though the jacket wrapped out her shoulders is a familiar red (still smelling of fire from their last mission).

“You come here often.”

Wanda grimaces. Her sleeplessness was not as much of a secret as she had hoped it was.

She had known that Sam knew, he had approached her, offered to let her talk it out (as he was trained in such manners), but she had quickly declined. Wanda had assumed he would have told the Captain, but beyond that she had hoped more secrecy.

“Sam told you?”

“No,” Vision admits, which surprises her, “I do not require as much sleep as the average human. I notice you on some nights, leaving out the window, and coming up here.”

At least that would explain why she had seen him up from time to time when she was wandering about unable to sleep. It made Wanda feel a little bit better knowing she wasn’t waking him up with her constant sneaking out.

“I see,” she replies slowly, “Well, I’m afraid I won’t be very good company.”

“I don’t mind. If you don’t mind my presence.”

She could tell him to go away and he certainly would. Vision was always kind in that way. However, it was nice not to be alone for once. She still wasn’t used to being alone, so often having been in the company of her brother, and now with him gone… It was _lonely_ , and that was putting things lightly.

“I would enjoy that,” Wanda admits.

He accepts her words with a silent nod, raising his eyes to the sky just as she had been doing. For a while they sit simply like that, observes of the night sky, with only their thoughts between them. But then the Vison speaks up.  

“Could you tell me about them?”

“About what?”

“The stars.”

The question “Why?” is off her lips before she can take it back.

But Vision does not feel put off by her question, instead he shrugs his shoulders ever so slightly (a human movement that she had caught him miming as of late), “I have read up on them, there’s vast knowledge of the internet – but it’s all facts, numbers and words, distances and chemical compounds. It’s education, of course, but not…” He trails off.

Though Wanda understands clearly enough, it was not facts and science that made her fall in love with the night sky, but a sense of wonder that had filled her since she was a child – the sense of wonder that her mother had gifted her on those late nights before the bombs rained over their heads.

So she raises her hand up to the sky, and says, “Do you see the lights there? All grouped together, and shining bright?”

He follows her gaze and a second later replies, “Yes.”

“That is the great wagon in the sky.”

 

5

The first time they kiss, the moon shines brighter than usual, the stars seem to twinkle a bit more – and for a second Wanda nearly forgets how to breathe.

She barely remembers to slide her eyes shut, and not to sit there ramrod straight against him, at the first taste of his lips. Slowly, she presses her own lips in return, a soft motion that feels more confident as he responds in turn. Those hands which had always seemed cold finding purchase up against her arms.

 _This_ was worth all of the wishes that never came true.

When they finally break apart, she wants to lean towards him once more and continue the kiss. She manages to resist the temptation though, pulling away from him with a smile upon her lips, before settling back against the picnic blanket they had brought with them for their evening under the stars.

An evening that had only been slightly disrupted by the kissing, that had followed the first shooting star.

“Miss Maximoff,” Vision’s voice cuts through the post-kiss silence that had oven taken them, his tone was almost hesitant. “I hope that wasn’t too forward of me.”

She feels silly, noting how breathless she sounds when she replies, “Not at all.”

“Good. I had worried, but you said shooting stars were for wishing on,” Vision explains, “And I very much wished to kiss you.”

His words instantly bright a giddy smile to her lips.

“Does that mean, my dear Vision, that I’ll have to wait for another star to fall, before you kiss me again?”

Almost as soon as the question is off of her lips, there looms a shadow above her blocking out her view to the stars. For once Wanda doesn’t mind the obstructed view, especially not when she brings her arms upwards to pull him towards her and pick up right where they had left off mere moments before.

She could get used to this.

 

+1

Slowly she learns to believe in the stars again, to trust in the wonder before her eyes.

Especially when she sees that wonder reflected back at her, in two eyes that look so remarkably like her own (or a reflection of eyes that she once knew). The wondrous awe in their expressions, as they make wishes they’ll each forget come morning, and try to commit to memory as many Latin names as their father can offer in reply to their curious questions.

Though perhaps the best part is her husband, who lays back on the grass as the boys jump about and points out the wagon the sky, just as she had taught him shortly after their first meeting. Drawing an imaginary line, between the pinpoints of light far above them as she once had for him, and as her own mother had many years gone past.

She’s so caught up in the memory that she nearly misses the confusion in Billy’s voice as he asks, “Wait dad, isn’t that supposed to be the Big Dipper?”


End file.
